Aggies’ ‘next step’ needs to include bowl victory

COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M, tri-champion of the Big 12 South, isn’t competing in Saturday’s Big 12 title game in Cowboys Stadium, courtesy of the BCS standings — a debatable topic for another time.

The Aggies, however, received a big-time consolation prize on Tuesday, when they received and accepted an invite to play in the 75th Cotton Bowl in Cowboys Stadium on Jan. 7. A&M will face a Southeastern Conference team, and expect it to be LSU (though it hasn’t been announced), an old border rival of the Aggies from a series that stopped in 1995.

Back in the summer, A&M coach Mike Sherman said the team’s theme for this season was to “take the next step.” The Aggies did, in following up a 6-7 finish last year with a 9-3 regular season.

That next step, too, should include a bowl victory — just to show they can still do it. The last bowl A&M won, the galleryfurniture.com in 2001, doesn’t even exist anymore.

Since then, the Aggies have lost in the Cotton, the Holiday, the Alamo and the Independence — a well-rounded effort in postseason futility in the past six seasons (only the last can be hung on the current coaching regime).

Before the furniture bowl, won by then-coach R.C. Slocum, the Aggies lost four straight postseason games in the Cotton, Sugar, Alamo and Independence under Slocum. In fact, their last bowl victory outside of the furniture affair came in the last year they played LSU in their annual series — in 1995, a 22-20 victory over Michigan in the Alamo Bowl.

But, like the season just wrapped, things are shaping up in the Cotton Bowl for a favorable finish for the Aggies, who closed out the regular season with a six-game winning streak.

Before the season, I picked A&M to finish 8-4, based largely on a favorable league schedule – it’s always been that way in even years since Big 12 play started in 1996 – and three alleged cupcakes at Kyle Field to start the year.

A&M did me and plenty of other semi-educated guessers one better, even after a 3-3 start. And here’s why things look good for them in the Cotton Bowl, for starters: They’ve already played in Cowboys Stadium once this year, in a 24-17 loss to Arkansas that came down to the final play.

They know the environment — the Tigers, for instance, don’t. Also, expect the crowd to mostly be wearing maroon. Not only is the game in the Aggies’ home state, their fans apparently went nuts in buying up any available tickets on Tuesday, when A&M was announced as the game’s first participant.

A&M fans have a deep appreciation of the Cotton Bowl, a longtime Southwest Conference beauty queen, and it was evident from the moment the bowl announced the invite on Tuesday.

A&M, however, has lost its last two bowl games against SEC teams by a combined 55 points — 38-7 to Tennessee following the 2004 season, and 44-20 last year to Georgia in the Independence. Based especially on their rejuvenated defense under first-year coordinator Tim DeRuyter, that won’t be a trend that continues on Jan. 7.

Plenty of Aggies wanted to split for the SEC last summer, when the Big 12 shakedown was on that cost the league Nebraska (to the Big Ten) and Colorado (to the Pac-10). Those pro-SEC fans will at least get the next best thing on a glamorous Friday night to wrap up this season: a prime-time SEC opponent, and a big-time chance for the Aggies to put their bowl demons to rest in taking yet another next step.